Jane Doe
LSAC
Personal Statement
“AmeriCorps? What’s that? And you’re only making how much money?” I wish I knew how many times I have had this exact conversation since graduating from college in 2015. Explaining AmeriCorps is second nature to me at this point. After four years of studying history at the University of Kentucky most of my family and friends assumed I would go on to further schooling. I was often asked if graduate school or law school was in my future. However I surprised everyone by deciding to take a gap year to become an AmeriCorps volunteer. I felt that the important decision of choosing my life path could not be made lightly and AmeriCorps would allow me to do some good while I considered my career path. My undergraduate involvement in multiple community service organizations only further bolstered my decision. One gap year in the program quickly turned to three as I served as an AmeriCorps volunteer in both West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. The lessons I learned about myself during that time, as well as my choice of undergraduate study, are what have brought me to my current decision to apply for law school.
AmeriCorps, a national service program created during President Johnson’s War on Poverty, acts as sort of a domestic PeaceCorps, tasking young people to move to some of the United States’ most vulnerable communities and work to alleviate poverty. The life of an AmeriCorps volunteer is far from glamorous. Every day volunteers clean up riverbeds, tutor students in inner city schools, build houses, and even assist with natural disaster relief, all while living in essential poverty. Volunteers make a very modest living stipend and most, like myself, require the assistance of government aid just to get by. They live and work in these conditions in order to better understand the condition of the poor in the United States, while also making a positive impact in local communities. During my term as an AmeriCorps volunteer I worked in the public history field, first for a small museum before moving to a nonprofit as an archives specialist. I spent my days telling the story of the Appalachian region, sharing the strong cultural identity and rich history with both visitors and community members. Although my job was to help shed light on these positive attributes, it was impossible to ignore the hardships that I saw many of the members of my community face. Coming from a working class family in eastern Kentucky, I was already privy to some of the disadvantages the working class and poor in this country face every day - lack of economic opportunity, a low quality of education, severe environmental degradation - but I was never able to see how I could work to help alleviate those problems. AmeriCorps helped to shift my mindset and show that I could in fact make small changes in a community that would have lasting impact. This shift is what has led to my current interest in the study of law. My neighbors, family, and friends deserve to have people working for them who can help them navigate the legal waters and make their communities thrive.
I hoped my time in AmeriCorps would clarify the life path I wanted to take and it did just that. Although I loved working in the public history field, I learned that it was just a means to do what I was truly passionate about; working to make vulnerable communities a better place to live. I want to go into the study of law in order to help people; not just individually, but also through future political changes that could positively impact my community as a whole. In addition to my commitment to public service, my undergraduate degree in history instilled me with the skills necessary for a successful law student. A love of research, a mastery of both the stylistic and mechanical aspects of writing, and most importantly analytical reasoning that allows me to synthesize large volumes of text. As a student of history I was often tasked with understanding a wide scope of information and having to distill that into a more understandable summary or how it may have affected a proceeding series of events. I learned about the importance of contextual analysis and how no situation can be looked at from one single angle.
Those skills, along with my passion for civic service, will be a great asset during my time as a student of law. The AmeriCorps motto is “Getting Things Done,” a phrase I’ve lived and worked by for the last three years. My time with AmeriCorps may be coming to an end, but I am ready to use this mindset and ‘get things done’ with just as much passion and perseverance as I enter this new exciting chapter of my life.
